Transcultural and postcolonial explorations: unsettling education

Abstract

This article is based upon my keynote presentation to the 42nd ANZCIES Conference held at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane from November 26 – 28, 2014. It explores the ways in which an assemblage of transcultural and postcolonial theories allow us to productively unsettle Education at a time when dominant neoliberal discourses risk driving us back to conservative, monocultural, Westernized educational policies. Based on my recent book (Manathunga, 2014), this article summarizes the ways in which I drew upon a bricolage of postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, social and cultural geography theories (which I have loosely categorized as ‘Southern’ theories) about time, place and knowledge to reimagine intercultural doctoral supervision. It demonstrates how I found that assimilationist approaches to supervision are based upon the absence of history, geography and other cultural knowledge, while transcultural pedagogies are founded upon the centrality of place, the presence of past, present and future time and a deep respect for diverse cultural knowledges.